


"Yes"

by AllThoseOtherWorlds



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Angelic Possession, But it doesn't work because Lucifer, Episode: s05e04 The End, Free Will, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 20:38:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1563257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllThoseOtherWorlds/pseuds/AllThoseOtherWorlds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After he and Dean split up, Sam gets nightly visits from Lucifer, who tries to convince him to say "Yes".</p><p>Sam says "No" to save people's lives - for the greater good.</p><p>He says "Yes" for the same reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Yes"

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural. I do not make money from this.**
> 
> **Warning: There is one paragraph in this story which mentions suicide attempts. Please to not read if that triggers you.**
> 
> **Comments and constructive criticisms are always welcome! Even if you didn't finish reading the piece, I'd like to know what you did and/or didn't like.**
> 
> **This was written for the prompt: Use the words "musky" and "vermillion" in the first 250 words, for A Story a Day**
> 
> **Enjoy!**

                Sam said “No”.

                Lucifer smiled, confident in his predictions, and vanished in a misty haze, leaving Sam to wake up in a ramshackle motel room, the musky scent of some lingering mould assaulting his senses. He blinked a few times to clear his eyes before crawling out of the lumpy bed and heading to the bathroom. He certainly wasn’t going back to sleep, so he may as well start the day.

                He glanced at the clock and groaned. It was 5:00.

                Lucifer had been showing up in his dreams for a month now – ever since that first night just after he and Dean had parted ways. Lucifer spoke to him in a soft tone, eyes gentle and face understanding, but his words were vermillion and crimson shadows of a future Sam was determined to fight.

                Lucifer made it no secret that he wanted humans gone, or at least diminished beyond recognition. He listed for Sam all of his reasons, persuaded and cajoled him into agreeing that yes, humanity was a mess, a plague upon the Earth.

                But Sam still said “No”.

                Sam remembered the people he’d already hurt just by getting everything started. He saw them when he drove some beat-up car he’d jacked down the street to the next hunt, and when he popped into diners and reflexively scanned for Dean – not knowing if he was hoping or dreading seeing his brother again.

                He didn’t see him.

                When Sam finished his next hunt – a Wendigo that had terrorized hikers and killed six people before Sam even caught the case – he found the closest motel and crashed into the bed. He wasn’t seriously injured, but he knew he’d be sore for a week, and there was a nasty cut on his left arm that would get infected if he wasn’t careful. Wendigo were _fast_ , and chasing one had exhausted him.

                Still, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to sleep.

                If he slept, Lucifer would come back. Lucifer _always_ came back. There was always another lie, another beautifully woven chain of arguments and stories and _“You can trust me Sam; this is for the best”_. Sam always found it in himself to say “No”; he always thought of the people that would die and gathered the words to spit in the Devil’s face.

                But Lucifer had told him he would say “Yes”.

                Sam couldn’t see that happening – didn’t know what could _possibly_ convince him to throw away the lives of so many people like that – but he still harboured the sinking feeling that one day, however distant and impossible it seemed, he would surrender.

                He would have killed himself to prevent the end of the world – hell, had tried to – but Lucifer’s promises that _“Sam, you can’t just escape this. This is your destiny, and I will not let you die”_ always had him gasping for air minutes after his body should have just given up.

                Sam didn’t know how Lucifer was doing it, but he figured that death wasn’t an option. He had to say “No”, forever, and hope that by some miraculous feat he was stronger than the Devil.

                Sam felt himself falling asleep, and knew it would be moments before Lucifer caught up to him. Sure enough, it felt like mere minutes before his nightmare of dripping blood and black eyes was interrupted, fading out into a replica of the motel room in which he was staying. Lucifer gazed at him with softly compassionate eyes that nevertheless held promise of an icy death.

                “Hello, Sam,”

                “I won’t do it,” Sam said automatically. These conversations were not new, and it was hard to think of original lines after a while.

                “Oh, but you will, Sam,” Lucifer told him. “It’s only a matter of time, and I can wait. I can wait forever, but we both know I won’t have to.”

                “Lucifer,” Sam growled, but he was interrupted.

                “Sam,” the archangel chided him softly. “Listen. Even if your brother doesn’t break-”

                “-He _won’t_ ” Sam interjected. Of that, at least, he was certain. Sam was the danger, and they both knew it. That was why they weren’t hunting together anymore.

                Lucifer carried on as if Sam hadn’t spoken, only a light pause in his speech to indicate he’d heard him at all. “-Michael _will_ find a vessel, Sam. It may not be a good one – probably just a holdover, like Nick here – but it will be enough.”

                Sam sighed. “No.”

                “Do you know what will happen if we fight like that, Sam?” Lucifer asked him. “Everything dies. The planet gets destroyed in the battle, and it takes your paltry excuse of a species with it. But more than that, all natural life will be demolished – no plants, no animals, nothing left until someone wins and decides what to do with the scrap.”

                It was a terrifying picture, but Sam wasn’t about to let Lucifer scare him into agreeing with something that hadn’t even happened yet.

                “No,” he said tiredly, closing his eyes. “I won’t do it.”

                “Not yet,” Lucifer said, and Sam could hear the smile in his voice as the dream faded back into nightmares.

                Two and a half years passed like that. Every night, Lucifer visited Sam in his sleep. Every night, he recounted again and again why humanity was doomed either way, and why it was best for everything if Sam said “Yes”. _“Sam,”_ he said – always _“Sam,”_ , as though using his name would make him more inclined to agree – _“Michael doesn’t care about the Earth the way I do. If we fight and he wins, they’ll just try to make their own version of paradise. You’re all about free will, right? At least my way, nothing is static. Plants and animals are free to change and evolve, and even humanity will change as it falls. Isn’t that better than an empty paradise built on a demolished world?”_

After a year and some change, Sam was horrified to discover that he was starting to find the arguments persuasive. He still said “No”. It was saying “Yes” that had gotten him into all of this – “Yes” was what he’d said to Ruby when she’d offered him blood, was what he’d said when she asked him to kill Lillith. “Yes” could never bring about anything worth having.

                But one night, things changed.

                It had been three years since he’d split up with Dean, and Sam had long since given up hope that he would ever see his brother again. He hunted, because although he tried to stop someone always found him, and at least this way he was helping people.

                In a way, life reminded him of the months he’d spent after the trickster had killed Dean and left him dead for six months. He woke up, did what had to be done, went to sleep, and said “No”.

                It wasn’t much of a life, but the rest of the world was still there, so it was enough.

                One night, though, Lucifer visited him with a tense expression for the first time in all of his appearances. Instead of a calm, collected, “Hello, Sam,” the first thing he said was “Michael had found a vessel.”

                Sam didn’t believe him, at first. How could he know Lucifer wasn’t just tricking him? But he remembered Lucifer telling him he would never lie, and so far it seemed he hadn’t. Still, he had to ask.

                “How do I know you’re not lying?”

                “Come to Detroit,” Lucifer told him. “That’s where he’ll be. You have three days to make a decision, then we fight. You know what happens if you say “No.”.”

                Sam went to Detroit.

                Michael was standing in the middle of a city square, wearing the body of Sam’s half-brother Adam. His face was impassive, blanker than Lucifer’s.

                “What happens if you fight?” he asked. He had to know.

                “It will be a long battle,” Michael said after some deliberation. “But I will win, and there will be paradise.”

                Sam thought of blood. He thought of people dying and in pain, flung aside carelessly by the childish posturing of two ancient archangels.

                He asked, “What is paradise?”

                Michael looked at him scornfully. “Heaven on Earth, Sam,” he said, as though he was trying to sound enthusiastic but didn’t know how. “Everyone’s best memories, lived out forever.”

                Sam’s mind stuck on the words “memories” and “forever” and he heard Lucifer whispering in his mind, saying “static” and “free will”.

                He closed his eyes, whispered a prayer to a God he was sure had stopped listening, and said “Yes.”

                Millennia later, as he watched the world through Lucifer’s eyes and spied on it through the filter of an archangel’s knowledge, he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret it.

                Humanity had died out long ago, but the Earth was still there, still changing. Just in the past century, hundreds of new species had evolved and faded away. Many of them were even sentient, and apparently Lucifer had no problem with it as long as nobody ordered him to love them.

                God was still missing, so Sam thought they were probably safe. They would continue to build and change and die, and Lucifer would watch, and occasionally act, and things would continue as they always had before humanity existed.

                At least something had free will.


End file.
